Valve has finally admitted that CS:GO has a hitbox issue that it is working on.

Ever since being released back in 2012, fans of Valve shooter Counter-Strike: Global Offensive have noticed something... odd, about its hitboxes, the system used to detect exactly where your bullets hit your target. Recently, the following .gif was posted on reddit, featuring the almost comically broken hitboxes. It skyrocketed to the front page, finally prompting a response from Valve.

Valve's Matt Wood replied to the thread with the very terse: "It's being worked on. We don't have an eta." And that was all. Fans were elated that Valve finally acknowledged the issue after three years, but were disappointed that no more information was offered.

Prior to the game's release, back in March, 2012, Valve posted a blog post explaining that hitboxes in CS:GO would be considerably smaller than their Counter-Strike: Source counterparts, in order to ensure that the accuracy of your shots actually mattered. Well, it looks like in that process, it may have made things a little... too accurate, with the system refusing to register dead-on hits for seemingly no reason.

We've reached out to Valve to see if they can offer us more information, but don't expect to hear anything until "Valve Time" dictates a response.

Its probably been in a constant state of "Being worked on" since the game launched. If by being worked on you mean theres a guy who glances at the code every month or so, realizes it'd take longer than five seconds to fix, then shrugs his/her shoulders and moves on.

shintakie10:Its probably been in a constant state of "Being worked on" since the game launched. If by being worked on you mean theres a guy who glances at the code every month or so, realizes it'd take longer than five seconds to fix, then shrugs his/her shoulders and moves on.

And the problem with Valve's "start your own projects, build your own team - there are no bosses!" philosophy rears its head."Hey, do you want to join my team for tedious, repetitive, and boring hitbox testing for a game that's been out for three years and is already making us a boatload of money?"

MonsterCrit:Maybe it's just me but what's the issue with those hit boxes?

The issue is that they are small enough that the model sticks out, so that it's possible for the model to be struck without registering in a hitbox (in other words, the polygons aren't all in the hitboxes so hits in some areas don't count). It wouldn't be so bad if it was only in one or two spots or at odd angles, but the overlap is in some key areas and all over the models.

Think of it like playing darts with a dartboard partially buried in the wall: even if you hit where it should be, you may not get points.

OT: Even just glancing at that picture I can see where their problems are arising from; how did that get by QA? Such a shame that it's taken them so long to even admit there's a problem. Given that I still see patch notes and updates for issues in some of my other valve games (including some ridiculously old ones), I can't believe that it's been 3 years and they still haven't done anything. I'm guessing that simply increasing the hitbox sizes causing some other issues with the game, otherwise it would have been an easy fix.

I guess valve has been too busy making hats and cluttering up steam with less-than-friendly consumer practices.

MonsterCrit:Maybe it's just me but what's the issue with those hit boxes?

You're joking right?

Either that or I'm guessing you didn't click the link to the reddit thread and then check out the gif.

Short version: Guy comes around a box, sprays down a guy leaving 11 rounds left in his magazine. Turns another corner to find a second guy planting them bomb. Pumps the remaining eleven rounds into him at point blank range with the crosshairs firmly centre mass and...gets apparently two hits for 27 damage.

Probably due to the fact that the hitboxes being smaller than the model means that in particularly awkward cases like that huge parts of the model can be outside the hitbox.

I played a lot of CS:GO and always felt something was off. Even though I could clearly see my tracers landing, only 1/2 would register sometimes. With zero experience in game development I just shrugged this off as poor play. Now I can say it's only 1/2 poor play:)

The .gif showed a discrepancy between the hitboxes and this one particular animation. The animation probably moved, but the hitboxes didn't move with it. This isn't evidence of a huge fundamental problem with the game.

So if Valves usual ETA for Working on things is to be followed then this fix will appear some point after we colonise alpha-beta-9 and make contact with the Starborn ones. And even then it will probably just be on internal testing.

i don't understand people's blind devotion to valve. had EA or Ubisoft pulled something like this, there would be riots (in the forums). But Valve takes 3 years to address what really seems like a minor fix, and the people celebrate when they receive a what, 7 word response?? Valve seems to be only coasting on the goodwill they earned over a decade ago, and has steadily been making shittier and shittier choices.

yet, the outcry is never as vitriolic as what is thrown towards other companies...

you do realize that the Holy Grail of valve gaming, half life, has a silent protagonist and all the npc's just go about their exposition and dialogue (monologues, really) and act as if this is entirely acceptable.

i love half life, portal, left for dead, i have plenty of steam games. but that doesn't mean we should just ignore what are glaringly obvious poor business practices.

CAPTCHA: Giant Panda. probably the next "simulator" to get greenlit on the abomination that has become the steam store.

Houseman:The .gif showed a discrepancy between the hitboxes and this one particular animation. The animation probably moved, but the hitboxes didn't move with it. This isn't evidence of a huge fundamental problem with the game.

Nope, it's not. But that's not gonna stop this forum from stroking the Valve-hate-boners!

The article also grossly overstates how widespread the whining about CS:GO's hitboxes is. Most players, even at the pro level, have not had much issue since release. Certainly not to the degree the article claims. Most never even experience the issue, save for a handful of situations involving certain animations or latency discrepancies.

Scrythe:Correct me if I'm wrong, but hasn't "comically bad hitboxes" always been a problem with the Counter Strike series?

Just to be clear, the hitboxes is general are fine. This .gif is related to a very specific issue where the bomb planting animation moves a lot but uses the standard crouching hitboxes, so the model leans forward a lot more than its hitboxes and seemingly dead-on shots miss.

Seems a lot of people are jumping on the anti-Valve bandwagon without much perspective on how bad the issue is, which is not much. It should absolutely have been fixed by now, but it's not like it ruins as many games as the current comments outcry would indicate.

QuadFish:Just to be clear, the hitboxes is general are fine. This .gif is related to a very specific issue where the bomb planting animation moves a lot but uses the standard crouching hitboxes, so the model leans forward a lot more than its hitboxes and seemingly dead-on shots miss.

Seems a lot of people are jumping on the anti-Valve bandwagon without much perspective on how bad the issue is, which is not much. It should absolutely have been fixed by now, but it's not like it ruins as many games as the current comments outcry would indicate.

We're talkin about a very basic problem here. Hitboxes are a core part of any game. To have them be broken, even if its not a widespread break, and to have them broken for years and no one ever cared to fix it? That's a damn problem.

Its like someone said above, if this had been EA and Battlefield or Activision and CoD there'd have been riots in the streets.

Is it a huge problem? Nope. Should it absolutely have been fixed in the 3 years the game has been out? Absolutely. Especially considerin the problem isn't some obscure bit of code that somehow causes a bug with a completely unrelated bit of code. Its a hitbox attached to your player model. That should not take 3 years to fix.

Houseman:The .gif showed a discrepancy between the hitboxes and this one particular animation. The animation probably moved, but the hitboxes didn't move with it. This isn't evidence of a huge fundamental problem with the game.

Yeah, hard to tell with that gif but I assume it's just the server's hit detection not realizing that the player is in that animation.

We're talkin about a very basic problem here. Hitboxes are a core part of any game. To have them be broken, even if its not a widespread break, and to have them broken for years and no one ever cared to fix it? That's a damn problem.

Its like someone said above, if this had been EA and Battlefield or Activision and CoD there'd have been riots in the streets.

Is it a huge problem? Nope. Should it absolutely have been fixed in the 3 years the game has been out? Absolutely. Especially considerin the problem isn't some obscure bit of code that somehow causes a bug with a completely unrelated bit of code. Its a hitbox attached to your player model. That should not take 3 years to fix.

The hitboxes are not broken though. The only reason this is news now is because we finally got an example where it noticeably affected a pro game, hence all the attention on Reddit and requests to Valve to look into it. Aside from the tiny minority of games where this bug showed up, the hitboxes do what they are designed to do. I guarantee Battlefield and CoD have similar 1%-of-the-time bugs that are not currently causing street riots.

Don't get me wrong, I do agree with some of what you're saying (i.e. easy enough that it should have been fixed), but your tone, and the tone of most of the commenters in the thread, makes me think people are still overestimating the scale of the issue. Seems a lot of people are blaming inexperience with the game on hitboxes/mechanics, like this guy:

ASnogarD:I bought CS:GO at launch, played a few rounds, snuck up behind an enemy and emptied a clip of my FAMAS (I think) at 2 meters into the guys back, he turns and drops me with his pistol...

Yes I was aiming, I had the reticle full on his back, the ping was decent (about 50 - 60 ms), the target was moving very slowly.

I uninstalled the game and never looked at it since.

Counter Strike takes hundreds of hours or more to master the shooting mechanics. It's designed to be hard to punish carelessness and spraying and reward careful, precise shooting. I hate being that "you're just not very good yet" guy, but I don't think blaming your own inexperience on the game itself after less than an hour playing is a valid criticism. Just go through this thread and you can count the number of people who either haven't played GO or only barely played, who are either expressing their frustration at a tough game or commenting based on no personal experience.

tl;dr The game is not broken. It's a rare hitbox issue being fixed right now, and people in this thread are using the news as an excuse to vent about a game they don't know well enough to validly criticise.

QuadFish:I hate being that "you're just not very good yet" guy, but I don't think blaming your own inexperience on the game itself after less than an hour playing is a valid criticism. Just go through this thread and you can count the number of people who either haven't played GO or only barely played, who are either expressing their frustration at a tough game or commenting based on no personal experience.

tl;dr The game is not broken. It's a rare hitbox issue being fixed right now, and people in this thread are using the news as an excuse to vent about a game they don't know well enough to validly criticise.

Yeah, have to agree with you here, it's kinda funny how people are coming out saying the whole game is broken or something. Last time I checked most people were playing just fine.

Yeah dude, sorry to hear about your experience with CS, but that shit happens. It's not CoD where you just click on people and they die, aim is a skill in CS. I'm still pretty bad myself by the way, I miss sprays all the time.

Well I have played CS since 1.4 pre Steam when it was on the old WON system, I played CS:S quiet a lot too so I am fairly well versed in the aim and spread of CS weapons.Thing is when I play BF or CoD titles, I aim and fire my weapon and bullets hurt things, in CS:GO I carefully aim and fire my weapon and it sprays like a hosepipe with a stick jamming the end... ie everywhere bar where I am aiming.

Note where I said I was like 2 meters from the target, aiming and firing at the broadest area of the target and the target was unaware and moving slowly... yet a clip of controlled bursts resulted in 2 hits , leg and arm and nowhere near the back that I had in my sights.

ASnogarD:Well I have played CS since 1.4 pre Steam when it was on the old WON system, I played CS:S quiet a lot too so I am fairly well versed in the aim and spread of CS weapons.Thing is when I play BF or CoD titles, I aim and fire my weapon and bullets hurt things, in CS:GO I carefully aim and fire my weapon and it sprays like a hosepipe with a stick jamming the end... ie everywhere bar where I am aiming.

Note where I said I was like 2 meters from the target, aiming and firing at the broadest area of the target and the target was unaware and moving slowly... yet a clip of controlled bursts resulted in 2 hits , leg and arm and nowhere near the back that I had in my sights.

You have to think about recoil compensation and aim time. That is what makes CS unique, shooting guns is hard.

tl;dr The game is not broken. It's a rare hitbox issue being fixed right now, and people in this thread are using the news as an excuse to vent about a game they don't know well enough to validly criticise.

The hitboxes are broken though, well maybe not broken, but definately not polished enough. In a game where skill in both knowledge and weapon handling are a huge deal, small things like that are a problem. And this article only brings up one part of the issue. There is the case of the head hitbox getting placed in the models abdomen while jumping. That is an incredible problem that is easily exploitable. Say, playing as CT on Mirage. You can without risking getting hurt check apps on B site by jumping by van.

Why are they even using hitboxes? They can do the detection in the character models themselves just like rigging it to a skeleton. Far more accurate than a "box" that covers the body. Then it's just a matter of the code that runs the detection which is probably Valves issue here is they adjusted the code so the projectile has to hit closer to the center of the hitbox or it wont register and that will lead to undetected obvious hits.

The hitboxes are broken though, well maybe not broken, but definately not polished enough. In a game where skill in both knowledge and weapon handling are a huge deal, small things like that are a problem. And this article only brings up one part of the issue. There is the case of the head hitbox getting placed in the models abdomen while jumping. That is an incredible problem that is easily exploitable. Say, playing as CT on Mirage. You can without risking getting hurt check apps on B site by jumping by van.

I appreciate that you're looking at it from real experience. The hitboxes aren't perfect, but there's a big difference between not perfect and broken. The jumping and planting bugs aren't excusable (though jumping punishes the jumper more than their shooter), but the hitboxes are pretty accurate at all other times so I would call that working but unpolished. It's a bit subjective, but I'd draw the line at "broken" if there was a consistent, systematic hitreg error, which there isn't. The recent change of inaccuracy calculation to server-side to prevent nospread cheats isn't helping the perception though unfortunately.

JET1971:Why are they even using hitboxes? They can do the detection in the character models themselves just like rigging it to a skeleton. Far more accurate than a "box" that covers the body. Then it's just a matter of the code that runs the detection which is probably Valves issue here is they adjusted the code so the projectile has to hit closer to the center of the hitbox or it wont register and that will lead to undetected obvious hits.

Afaik all major modern shooters use some form of hit mask (Source uses boxes, Battlefield uses 'pills' etc). The exact method is different for each game, but usually each polygon in the object you want to test has to be calculated for. For a modern character model of 10-30000 polygons that's 10-30000 checks per shot which is unnecessary when a close-fitting hitbox of 100-1000 faces can be accurate enough. If Valve had that much server power to spare they'd probably upgrade to 128-tick servers over the current 64-tick like the community's been asking for for years. It'd be a waste to put it into something so unnecessary.

QuadFish:Just to be clear, the hitboxes is general are fine. This .gif is related to a very specific issue where the bomb planting animation moves a lot but uses the standard crouching hitboxes, so the model leans forward a lot more than its hitboxes and seemingly dead-on shots miss.

Thank you. I was looking at that and thinking it might be a lag issue or something, because generally if that many shots fail to register at all then that's the reason. But your explanation makes perfect sense. Let's hope the people at Valve picked up on it.

I was in the beta for this game -- signed up on a lark and got randomly picked -- and I remember keeping up with the conversation on the forums. People were making all kinds of nitpicks, but even as someone who had no experience with the series up to that point, they mostly seemed perfectly reasonable to me. And they were almost all ignored despite the game still being in active development. Like the guy who said you should be able to see your own character's shadow because it can give away your position. That was a very smart idea, and I don't think they ever implemented it. I myself recommended that they take advantage of their cinematic physics system and have the time bombs' explosions actually affect the environment, like they do in Team Fortress 2. Game came out, explosions still just create an ineffectual puff of smoke.